Tag: Cairo

The Return

By Paul Mirabile

Jonathan Harper was startled out of sleep by an impatient ringing at the door bell. He rolled out of bed, tip-toed to the sitting-room and peeked through the curtains covering the bay windows. In the dim, moonlit night he perceived a slender, young man dressed in some sort of long robe. He was completely bald. Again the bell rang and rang under the young man’s relentless ringing. Jonathan hastened to the hearth, picked up the poker out of its andiron then quietly moved towards the door. With a quick jerk he unlocked it so as to take the knocker by surprise. The knocker looked stonily at Jonathan’s sleepy, pale face and at the poker.

“Whatever are you doing with that mighty weapon, father?” was that knocker’s first remark. Jonathan stared in astonishment, mouth agape. “Yes, father it’s me, your son Francis. Have you forgotten me ?”

And that was how Francis Harper, the fugitive Buddhist monk, and his father Jonathan, completely thunderstruck, were reunited …

“Quick, come in … come in … At this hour of the night, Francis. And look at you, dressed like a beggar monk. So thin. I hardly recognised you.” Jonathan was in a state of great excitement. Francis sailed in, closed the door and settled on the familiar canopy. He scanned the sitting-room: Nothing had changed.

“You gave me a scare, Francis,” Jonathan resumed, still standing.

“Well, who would be ringing at this hour of the night?” Francis returned in a flat voice. His father hadn’t quite understood the question. He seemed half asleep. “Where’s mum?”

“Who?”

“Mummy … your beloved wife?” Francis pressed ironically. Jonathan stared emptily at him. “Well, is she here, or has she gone to see her boring sister Hazel ? Perhaps she’s out with her lover?” Jonathan winced.

“Don’t be vulgar, Francis, please.”

“Come on, I’m only having you on. Where is she?”

Jonathan stepped forward: “I thought she was with you! She went to find you in Laos a year ago, and I’ve never had any word from her since.”

Francis looked blankly at this father then jumped up. “She’s mad ! Why did you let her go, damn it?”

“I didn’t let her go, Francis; she woke up one morning and off she went leaving me a note.”

“What note? Do you still have it?”

“The note … Yes …” Jonathan shuffled to his bedroom to procure Heather’s note that she had left for him on the chimney-mantle. He handed it to his son. It seemed that it had been wrinkled up into a ball then roughly flattened out.

“Bloody hell! Why did she do that?” Francis gritted his teeth. “It’s such a dangerous place to be for mummy. She has no clue of the dangers : the jungles are infested with disease and wild animals. Food and water are dodgy. It’s another world.”

The son glared at his father then threw himself down onto the canopy, burying his face in his hands.

“I’ve put the police on to it but nothing has come up,” Jonathan defended himself, yet in a contrite tone of voice. “She believed that only she could bring you back to us. But … how did you come back here?”

The question struck Francis oddly. He looked at his father who still stood: “Do put down that poker, you cut such a ridiculous figure.” Indeed, Jonathan hadn’t noticed that he still clenched the poker tightly. He tossed it into the cold hearth. Francis sighed: “Me ? Do you really want to know, father?”

“Of course I want to know, then we can both set out to find mother.”

“No we cannot just set out to find mother. I am a wanted criminal in Thailand and in England. Have you forgotten?”

“Rubbish! How then did you manage to get home if you are wanted by the police?” Jonathan persisted, trotting back and forth from the sitting-room to the kitchen to make coffee and toast muffins.

“That’s a long story,” Francis lamented, crumbling up the letter and dropping it to the carpeted floor.

“Well, we have the whole night, so please, I must know the truth. It’s been a nightmare for me in this house all alone. You know that Andy pops in almost every day to rub salt into my wounds, drinking my brandy and wheeling that mordant wit of his.”

“You mean that you’ve been pissing it up with that halfwit?” Francis snapped.

“No … no, of course not. But he invites himself over and never knows when to leave. How many times have I put up with his drunken effrontery.”

“Well, if I ever see him here …”

“No ! He must not see you; if he does all Stevenage will know and that means the police, too. No. We must find a way to hide you, to keep you safe from the law until this rotty mess is straightened out.”

“Straightened out?” Francis sneered. He eyed his father coldly. ‘Forced’ solitude had wrinkled the old man’s ashen face, had given him the appearance of Gandalf straight out of The Hobbit, all he needed was a grey cloak, staff and floppy hat to complete the portrait instead of his thirty-year old pyjamas. The flesh on his neck had gone flabby and his eyes, colourless, like his thinning, flaky hair. Jonathan finished his coffee: “Please tell me how you left Laos and managed to reach England,” he said in a weak voice, practically beseeching his son.

Francis took a gulp of coffee, he made a wry face: “I haven’t drunk coffee for over twelve years.” Setting the cup down on the settee, he began his tale. And as Francis fumbled to find his words Jonathan observed the metamorphosis of his appearance.

Francis’ face, laboured by years of privations, illness and fasts, had the appearance of rough, sandy stone. His eyes were set deep in their orbits whilst the furrows of his crow’s eyes twitched at every slight movement or sound in the sitting-room. The callousness of his face darkened all its former freshness of youth – that youth he had abandoned in southeast Asia. He swayed slightly in the canopy, nibbling at his muffin, apathetically. Jonathan made some more coffee and toasted more muffins for his enfeebled son. He opened slightly the bay window curtains then finally settled down in his wicker chair.

Francis began lethargically, rubbing his hairless head: “I had been living from monastery to monastery in northern Laos, constantly ill because of the food and water until one day I decided that I had no future in those remote places of worship. Mind you, the religious services captivated me as did the jungle and the snaking, mystical Mekong. The monks were jovial chaps, very respectful and reserved. They offered a soothing solace to my inner and outer sufferings. But I had to leave and return to England. My mind and body ached for familiarity… for mother and for the English language …”

“And your father?” interposed Jonathan, biting his quavering lower lip. Francis looked sadly at his aging father. “I know I haven’t been the best of fathers to you, Francis,” Jonathan conceded, his cheeks flushing red with shame. “But you will acknowledge that I did encourage you to travel to Asia to earn your livelihood. You know, I did not choose my solitude. It was imposed on me.”

“Did we then impose it, me and mummy?” came Francis’ laconic retort.

Jonathan looked dismal, a bit jarred by the remark. He stared at his son through sleepy, spent eyes. Francis laughed: “Of course I’ve returned for you too!” He pursued: “Thanks to my Lao passport procured for me by the Venerable Father, I travelled to visa-free countries. First, I boated it down to Vientiane, then took a cheap flight to Moscow. From there to Cairo, where I renewed my British passport at the embassy wihout any questions asked, although it had expired over six years. Anyway, with my British passport I entered Italy by boat, and from there on used my British passport since European border officials hardly looked at it. To avoid the usual big entries into England I hitched up to the Hook of Holland and took the ferry to Harwich.”

“But hadn’t the border officials suspected anything … your dress?”

“I changed dress in Italy but wore my robe when crossing into England.”

“But your photo?”

“My face has undergone a drastic change, father — haven’t you noticed?” Jonathan had but said nothing. “Anyway, what could they say to a tonsured-headed Englishman who had become a Buddhist?” Jonathan paused, as if reflecting.

“And the money to pay for all these flights, boats and trains?”

“I had my Cook’s travellers’ cheques safely in my money belt.”

Jonathan sighed. “Look Francis, we must not dilly-dally, Interpol may be on your trail at this very moment. No dawdling about, I have to find a place to hide you.”

“Don’t exaggerate, father, please.”

Jonathan sized up his gaunt, emaciated son: “I hope you’re not thinking of turning yourself over to the police.” Jonathan wrung his hands fearfully.

“No, no, I’ve paid for my selfishness and stupidity. Every day and night for twelve years that horrible scene still floods my mind.”

Here it seemed to Jonathan that Francis began to weep quietly. What to do ? What to do ? Comfort him with a fatherly hand on the shoulder ? A paternal embrace ? Or simply a kind, appeasing word ? Jonathan, whilst he observed his son, realised that he had never been a fatherly towards his son. Heather had been right — he thought as he looked on helplessly at his son’s bony, trembling shoulders.

The grandfather clock struck six.

“My God, it’s morning!” Jonathan cried, going to the bay window. “People will be milling about.”

“So what, people always mill about in the morning,” came Francis’ sardonic reply.

“Someone may see you.”

“Through the window? Who will see me father if I stay in the house?”

“Right you are, Francis.”

“And mother?” Francis retorted, a glare of reproach in his cloudy eyes.

“Mother? Why hasn’t she ever written to me? Did you not have any news of her in Laos?”

“Some monks did speak about an old lady with grey hair seen in different boats on the Mekong. That’s about all. It could have been anyone … “

“Anyone? An old, grey-haired lady traipsing up and down the Mekong,” Jonathan cut in savagely. He fell back into his wicker chair. “I have to get you out of England before I tend to your mother. I will act quickly and decisively for you and her.”

Francis stared at his wizen-faced father, and for the first time in his life the young man felt a pang of pride towards him. Yes, a pang of pride because Francis had always believed his father to be a moral coward, a skulker who purposely disavowed, even mocked all his childhood projects, which had gradually raised an emotional tension between them. The clock struck half-past six. The first rosy rays of the sun trickled into the sitting-room with the warm, gay light. At that stroke of the clock Francis truly felt that their generational tension had been somehow lightened.

Francis stood. Jonathan stood. They gazed at each other and an instant later broke out into howls of laughter, laughing like two little boys. They laughed and laughed as they had never laughed before.

Jonathan strode over to Francis and slapped him paternally on the back: “Let’s have a real British breakfast.” Which they did — bacon and eggs, kipper and fresh orange juice which Jonathan squeezed himself.

The doorbell rang. Jonathan jumped out of his chair. Francis hastened to the bay window. It was Andy. “Blast! Into your room Francis and don’t make a sound. I’ll send that bugger packing. How dare he come bothering me at this hour of the morning.”

As Jonathan shuffled to the door, Francis made a bee-line for his bedroom. Jonathan threw it open.

“Well old man, up bright and early, hey?” began Andy in his usual strident, exasperating tone. “How about a little excursion to St Albans this morning ? They have an excellent pub where the food is the best in Hertfordshire.” Andy struck his customary ill-bred pose.

“No thanks, not today Andy, I’m terribly busy …”

“You, busy, Johnny old boy? Come on, mate, we’ll take your car.”

“That goes without saying since you haven’t one,” Jonathan rejoined peevishly. “No, today I must finish some work. You go and tell me how the food is. We’ll see about tomorrow.” He corrected himself. “No … next week ; I shall be popping over to visit my cousin-in-law.”

Andy sensed that Jonathan was lying.

“I see,” and a grotesque smile stretched over his red-spotted, pasty face. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, hey?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Oh nothing … nothing, old boy. Have a good time and let me know how things work out.” He gave Jonathan an equivocal wink. Jonathan slammed the door in his face.

“Bloody idiot!” he growled. Jonathan stopped in his tracks. “My cousin-in-law … that’s it ! I’ll send Francis to Mary in Ireland. No one will ever think of searching for him in Ireland.”

Jonathan was all agog. He had found a solution to Francis’ dilemma thanks to Andy’s unexpected visit. He called to Francis who opened the door of his room carefully.

“No bother, the blighter’s gone, and I have a smashing idea, Francis. I have half a mind to drive you to Ireland where the British police will never hunt you down. My cousin-in-law, Mary O’Casey, lives in Waterville. Once we’re there and you’ve met her, I’ll drive back to England, get a flight to Laos and bring mother back home.”

Francis had never seen his father so animated. His shrivelled features seemed to rejuvenate, new blood infuse that puffy, pasty, unshaven Gandalf face. Francis, however, stood at the door of his room, a strange, alien gleam in his eyes. He turned to his father: “You’ve left everything as it was,” he pronounced softly. “Malraux’s La Voie Royale, Maugham’s The Gentleman in the Parlour. My desk … Everything as it was … exactly … “

“Yes, your mother wished it so. Nothing has been touched. The room has been waiting for your return. Unfortunately the circumstances require desperate action that I would never have imagined. We must buckle up, my boy.”

“Ireland?” wondered Francis sceptically.

“Ireland,” Jonathan echoed. “I shall get you there tonight and we’ll be on the Birkenhead ferry for Dublin tomorrow morning. Dress like an average Englishman and use your British passport.”

“What do you mean by an average Englishman, father?” Francis enquired.

“Well … Put a cap on your bald head and dress in English clothes. You’re not thinking of getting into Ireland with your monk’s robe, are you?”

Francis chuckled: “Don’t worry, my days of impersonating a Buddhist monk are over.”

“Were you then not sincere about your conversion?” his father asked rather puzzled.

Francis shrugged his shoulders: “I don’t know. I don’t know who I really am. I seem to have lost all identity of myself by impersonating or embracing so many identities. Now I’m off to Ireland. Will I become an Irishman?” A melancholic smile stretched his bloodless lips.

“Whatever you become Francis you will always be my son.” Francis nodded, albeit the resigned gesture seemed to embarrass his father who eyed his son with genuine sympathy.

“Mary will have you working in the gardens, and you know she has lodgers there all year round. You could help her out in her home. She lost her husband many years ago. A fine woman, she is.”

Francis nodded again and stepped back into his room. He closed the door silently and lay on his bed, his blood-shot eyes fixed on all his books nicely arranged on the shelves. He smiled. Then those sleepless eyes fell on a photo of his beloved Irish setter, Patty. He closed them and thought of nothing … nothing at all. He began to murmur a prayer of contrition in the name of the Enlightened One …

Meanwhile in the sitting-room Jonathan set to work without delay. He had already contacted his cousin-in-law by phone, explaining Francis’ predicament. He related everything to her without any feelings of guilt or mawkish sentimentality. Mary despised sentimentality. She would welcome Francis like her own child — a child she had never herself had.

Francis had fallen asleep. His father woke him at five in the afternoon. They had a large dinner, after which, under the cover of darkness, Jonathan packed Francis’ belongings in the boot — two shirts and trousers, a pair of walking boots and woollen socks, and his favourite books, Malraux’s La Voie Royale, Maugham’s Collected Short Stories, three of Richard Burton’s travel books and T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

They reached Birkenhead in the morning two hours before the first ferry to Ireland. The bored border official hardly looked at their passports. An hour and a half later they were in Dublin. There the Irish waved them through after having taken a cursory glance at their passports. Two hours later they arrived at Mary O’Casey’s homestead near Hog’s Head. They were both exhausted but relieved to have accomplished their mission.

Mary welcomed them with a hearty lunch. She hadn’t seen Jonathan for over twenty-five years. As to Francis, she had seen him once at the age of five or six. Jonathan stayed on several nights. Mary had no lodgers at that time so she was happy to sit at the welcoming hearth, drink her evening brandy and chat with her distant family-in-law. She read about Heather in the tabloids and wished Jonathan all the luck to bring her back home. If the British bobbies couldn’t do it, well, Jonathan would! He nodded, weakly. Francis remained silent.

Three days later Jonathan bid farewell to Mary and his son. It was time to put into action his plan to retrieve Heather from the jungles of Laos. He would obtain his visa for Laos in London, then buy his flight ticket. He promised to keep Francis informed of any developments.

“Good or bad!” said Francis, with a serious face. Jonathan’s cheeks reddened. He didn’t answer, casting a covert glance at Mary. Instead he strode over to his son, kissed him on both cheeks, something he had not done since he was a baby, kissed Mary on the forehead and hastened out to the car. He was gone in a few minutes.

“I hope you’ll tell me some good stories of your travels, Francis,” Mary chirped cheerfully, taking Francis by the arm. “You know, I like a good story round the hearth. I’ll have you know that you’re in the land of leprechauns, banshees and sidhes.” Her greenish eyes twinkled with impishness.

“What are banshees and sidhes?” Francis asked sheepishly.

“Ah! The spirits of the dead, lad. The unquiet dead. But you needn’t bother about them, I chase minions away with my broom.” And Mary broke into peels of good-natured laughter.

Francis worked daily in Mary’s lovely flower and vegetable gardens, and when lodgers arrived he cooked them breakfast and dinner whenever she was at Waterville on an errand. Oftentimes, he accompanied the guests on the loop road where he could again and again admire the blanket bogs. Mary warned him on several occasions, waving a minatory finger at him, never to step foot in the lime-covered homestead. He never did, not because he was afraid of ghosts — his upriver experiences in Laos had hardened him on all fear of supernatural beings — but because he hadn’t the heart to disobey his father’s cousin-in-law, a cousin-in-law, by the way, that he never quite came to comprehend the genealogical connexion. No matter. He felt at home with this charming woman and with her lively lodgers.

Four quiet months elapsed. One late misty Autumn morning Mary handed Francis a letter from his father. It was posted from Luang Prabang, Laos. Francis quickly opened it. As he scanned the almost unreadable scribble of his father’s handwriting his now bearded face contracted and hardened into a stony expression of restrained grief.

“What is it, my lad?” Mary strolled over to him, frightened.

The young man set the letter down gently on the table: “Mummy’s dead, Mary. She died of illness in northern Laos six months ago. Father is bringing her back home for burial.” Mary placed a motherly hand on Francis’ shoulder and spoke a few words of real warmth. Francis stared vacantly through the open front door into the greyish autumn sky.

The first lodger of the morning thumped slowly down the wooden stairway for breakfast.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Tags British, Buddhist, Cairo, Dublin, England, European, Gandalf, Hobbit, Ireland, Laos, London, Luang Prabang, Maugham, Mekong, Moscow, Paul Mirabile, TE Lawrence, Thailand, The gentleman in the Parlour

Stories

Just Another Day

By Neeman Sobhan

These days, it seems to sixty-year-old Husna that the past is clearer than the blur of her mirror…

The black Morris had come to a halt near the major crossing on Top-Khana road. In the back seat, feeling as plump as the upholstery, Husna was sweating and dabbing her pretty twenty-year-old face and neck with the anchal end of her cotton Jamdani sari.

Pregnancy had made it hard for her to fit into the long tunics and gathered pants of her hitherto comfortable shalwar-kameez outfits. Beside her lay the folded newspaper that Baba, her father Dr. Rahman, had left behind that morning, when he got dropped at the Dacca Medical College. She picked it up to fan herself. It was the Bengali language daily, Azad[1], dated February 20, 1952. The headlines wafted back and forth, screaming in print the news of the continuing agitations around Dacca, East Pakistan, on the language issue.

Without needing to look at the paper, she knew about the meeting that day of the Language Action Committee from her youngest brother Shonju, the student activist. She knew that they were meeting to discuss a nationwide hartal[2] scheduled for tomorrow, a general strike against the government’s repressive policies and disregard for the legitimate demand of the people that their mother language be given its rightful place as one of the two state languages of the country.

Since January, when she had returned home from West Pakistan for her confinement, all the discussion around the family dinner table involved the Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin’s reiteration of Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah’s enraging declaration of two years ago that “Urdu, and only Urdu shall be the state language of Pakistan.”

She glanced at driver Rashid Miya. The middle-aged man seemed unaffected by the heat, unlike Husna. She was due for delivery in a “matter of days”, as Daktar Chacha[3], her father’s MD friend, had promised during the last check-up, patting her head as if she were still the teen-aged, newly married bride, who had left for West Pakistan a year ago with her banker husband, Jamil.

In a way she was glad that Jamil and she had left their familiar world of Dacca immediately after their arranged marriage, helping two newlywed strangers to bond over the shared adventure of starting life as Bengalis new to the quasi-foreign, Urdu-speaking territory of Karachi in West Pakistan.

Not that Urdu was unfamiliar to Husna. Despite problems with gender in the language, she could manage basic social conversation (though, it annoyed her that she never found any Urdu speaking Pakistani who could utter even a word of Bengali, or tried to). But she was proud that just by listening to the radio she had learnt to sing the popular film ghazals of her favourite Indian playback singer Talat Mahmood, or Noor Jahan, now a Pakistani singer, who migrated to Lahore recently, after the Partition of India five years ago.

It was a bit disappointing that Jamil preferred her to sing the Tagore and Nazrul songs her music teacher had taught her since childhood, when all along her heart hummed with film songs. Songs from Bengali and Hindi films that her strict mother had seldom allowed her to see, unless escorted to the cinema halls by friends and relatives, and on special occasions, like Eid.

She had hoped to right this wrong immediately upon getting married. After all, Ma always said, “Do whatever you wish….after you’re married.” And Jamil did take her to the cinema, though, mostly to see English films. Matinees or late shows at the Rex or Ritz, or an early show at the Odeon followed by dinner in a hotel like Beach Luxury. Once she had seen a belly dancer from Beirut or Cairo perform there and had felt embarrassed yet fascinated by the lissom female body, the unfettered, uninhibited moves. She had felt a dizzy sense of freedom just watching the dancer.

She sighed, running her hand over the watermelon that was her belly! Today she didn’t feel like that bright eyed young girl in Karachi anymore. Nor even a mother-to-be. She just felt like a bloated animal, she sulked looking out of the car window. They were at a standstill for what seemed like an hour. Minutes crawled like the runnels of sweat under Husna’s new high-necked blouse, inspired by the popular Indian Bengali actress Suchitra Sen. She dabbed the constant beading of her nose and upper lip that Jamil always said he found endearing.

She started a mental reply to his last letter. “Dearest one. . . ” She began, then floundered. This would be her third letter to him since she arrived in Dacca, but she was still not convinced about how to address him in writing. Some of her Urdu-speaking female acquaintances in Karachi called their husbands by name, though often using the polite pronoun “aap[4].” Ma always called Baba “Ogo[5]” or “Shuncho?” as in “Are you listening?” That was funny because even if Baba were not listening, Ma would chatter on.

She felt awkward and insincere mimicking the spontaneous affection in Jamil’s letters, calling her “Beloved” and his “Myna bird” and so many other endearments, while she was unable to address him in a way that felt comfortable and not a lie. As usual, she settled for no salutations but an outright “Kemon acho?”

How’re you? I’m as well as can be expected. It’s only February and already Dhaka is uncomfortably warm. How is Karachi? Here, it’s not just the weather that’s heating up, but the political environment as well. The ‘bhasha andolon’, which the English newspapers refer to as ‘the Language Movement’ is going on full force. Baba and Ma are always worrying about Shonju, who is out on the streets every day and in student meetings at all hours. He creeps home late and stores all his protest posters and fliers under my bed and fills me in on what’s going on. I often have to cover for him to the family….”

She pulled forward the end of her sari and tried to cover her belly and wipe her glistening face. Oh! Pregnancy was so boring; and this heat was claustrophobic. If only she could be like Shonju, free to just come and go, walk the streets or ride the cycle or take a rickshaw.

“Ki holo, Rashid Bhai? What’s up?” she asked, as she wound the window all the way down.

“Apa[6], I think there’s a procession approaching. I feel we should take a side street. This road is blocked.” Rashid was already turning the steering wheel.

“Oh! Then, no New Market today? I wanted to collect my harmonium that I left for tuning.” Husna’s voice was lost in a volley of shouts that came from somewhere ahead. Meanwhile, a rickshaw edged close to the car, and two boys, possibly students, with cloth bags hanging from their shoulders, started throwing pamphlets through the windows of a few buses and into other rickshaws that were milling around.

One pamphlet landed on Husna’s lap like the silly, anonymous love-note she had once received while being driven to college, just two years ago. She smiled. She had often wished the author had been her elder brother’s friend and her girlhood crush, Farid. But he was hardly the type to write something romantic to her. Certainly not “Beloved one” or “My Myna bird.” No, it was hard to imagine that serious, brooding, good-looking face bent over anything but medical books.

Rashid stopped to make way for a group of demonstrators, banners folded under their arms. Some raised a slogan and the rest joined in. “Manbo na! Manbo na! Never will we accept!” Husna’s heart pumped. Ah! Unlike her, these boys dared to proclaim that they rejected whatever was being imposed on them. Was this possible? She wished she could get out of the car and walk with the boys, raise her voice in slogans. Unthinkable and unladylike, of course; plus, she was a waddling, pregnant beast.

Rashid Miya swung the car around and they entered a narrow street that led out to a wider road. He braked to give way to a truck that sped past, full of khaki-uniformed police, their rifles flashing in the sun. “Too many demonstrations today near the university, Apa. I hope tomorrow, your father will not go to Medical College. And our Shonju Bhaiyya should be careful. He and his friends were getting on a rickshaw at the gate this morning, when I was wiping the car, and they were talking about processions tomorrow. I kept hearing the date. 21^st…Ekushey February. God only knows what will happen!”

“We better go home, Rashid Bhai. Shall we pick up Baba?”

“No, it’s only past 5. I’ll come for him later. Let me drop you first.”

Suddenly, preceded by the rumble of microphone, a van came into view. As it crawled past, it left the sputtering debris of words in crackling Bengali. She could decipher only: Section 144 imposed in the city… for 30 days…a ban on gatherings of more than 4 people in public places…processions or demonstrations to be severely punished…

Husna grew restless for Shonju. She prayed he would come home safely and not get embroiled in something foolhardy. He usually confided in her. At least, he used to till Husna got married. They were the closest among their many siblings. Even on the eve of her wedding, it was he and not one of her sisters who had insisted that if she had any doubts about this arranged marriage, it was not too late to speak up.

But she had never mustered enough courage. Or conviction. After all, Farid had not really confessed his feelings for her, and, from what she discovered about Jamil, he was a perfectly decent human being. In fact, she had no complaints about her husband, except that he was not the one her heart had chosen. If only she had met him on her own, and he had not been imposed on her, as if by state decree: “Jamil, and only Jamil shall be your husband!” And… if only elusive Farid had been clear about his feelings. Even if it were non-reciprocal, she would have felt free. Her heart would not now feel so mute.

Why was the language of the heart so complicated, so hard to decipher? It was as if its familiar truths, which could be accessed non-verbally, instinctively, were now locked in a foreign alphabet that she had to relearn in order to decode their meanings. Almost like that ridiculous proposal in the Legislative Assembly two years ago that Shonju had laughed with her about, regarding the use of Arabic script to write Bengali!

“Just imagine, Bubu, the word ‘mother’ would still be pronounced ‘Ma’ but not written ‘moye-akar’ but ‘meem-alef’! Our Brahmi script curling and prancing forward gracefully from left to right would be attacked from right to left by the slanting arrows of the Nastaliq squiggles, and then both colliding explosively in the middle!”

Oh! Shonju was so dramatic! A laugh escaped Husna, then she fell silent.

They were driving past the Ramna Racecourse. Her baby shifted in her womb. Later. . . many years later, she would think that her son Azeem knew that they were passing what in two decades would be a historical spot: the pulse point of an unprecedented political gathering on a March morning in 1971. On the seventh day of that month, a voice would rise like a colossal bird filling the Dhaka sky with its fateful, uncompromising call, announcing that the time had come “for the ultimate struggle, the struggle for freedom”: Ebarer shongram, shadhinotar shongram!

Had she been clairvoyant, known that the heady creature would swoop down and snatch her son and hurl them all into the whirlpool of destiny, perhaps she would have told Rashid Miya to change route, take another road. But would that have changed the course of history, erased the scribbling of fate?

For the moment, the Black Morris like a rigid pen on paper drives inexorably forward, and the future is drowned out by the sporadic shouts in the distance of “Rashtro bhasha Bangla chai! We demand Bangla for national language!”

The baby came early. In fact, the very evening after she returned from her outing, the pains started. There was no time to shift her to the maternity ward of the private clinic of Daktar Chacha, so he sent a nurse over to help deliver her baby at home. Early in the morning of February 21, her baby son arrived.

A trunk call was made to Karachi to give Jamil the good news. Then there was much rejoicing in the house with relatives dropping in to see the baby. By late afternoon, however, the atmosphere in the house became subdued as disturbing news from the streets filtered through.

The police had opened fire on protesting students. There were hushed discussions so she would not hear. But she overheard the day nurse telling the night nurse before she left that injured students had been taken to the Medical College. The very next day, Husna’s elder brother, the final year medical student, Monju Bhaijan, had come to the breakfast table shouting in rage that a student had succumbed to his wounds, and the body of another had been found on the floor behind the Anatomy room. Baba confirmed it with sadness.

Even Jamil’s letter to her after the joy of the news of Azeem’s birth contained a postscript: “Stay safe. These are volatile times. Worried about Shonju. The Dawn newspaper here carried an editorial saying that the people of West Pakistan have no objection to Bangla getting a status equal to Urdu. Why is there always such a divide between the wielders of political power and the populace?”

A few days later, Husna wasn’t sure if it was the 25^th or 26^th, Ma and the nurse had just taken away the baby when Shonju arrived. He was carrying a box of sweets. “Moron Chand and Sons” it said on the box. Inside were her favourite sweets: the soft, creamy white, renin-based balls of rose-scented pranhara-shondesh.

Ma must have bought the sweets and forced him to come visit his newborn nephew. Husna breathed a sigh of relief, seeing her brother, who paced restlessly, refusing to sit.

“I saw the baby in Ma’s room on my way in. Looks like Dulabhai.”

“Really? I think he has our family nose.”

“Poor kid! Hope not.” Shonju finally grinned, but his mind was elsewhere. He was wearing a black badge of mourning on his white kurta sleeve.

Husna stretched her arm and took his hand: “My heart aches for those who died, Shonju. But I’m so grateful you are okay.”

He didn’t let go of her hand but turned his angry face away.

“We students are still in battle mode. It will continue, the andolon, the protests, the confrontation. The Shaheed Minar memorial we constructed outside Medical College was destroyed, but we will rebuild it.”

“Shabdhan[7], Shonju!” Husna cautioned.

He pulled his hand away, clicking his tongue: “Oh! Don’t worry. Nothing will happen to me. When you fight for a cause you feel superhuman, invincible. The collective spirit strengthens us, makes us feel immortal. We are more than an individual life. What will our enemies do? Kill or wound one person, right? But the cause… they can’t defeat that. We are the multitudes… ”

“Uff! Stop this speechifying!” Husna rolled her eyes. “Mothers don’t want multitudes. They just want their sons. Sisters want their brothers. Yes, even though you’re a moron, I’d rather have you than a street full of heroes.”

Shonju laughed. “In that case, Bubu, you better start speaking only in Urdu. Sell your mother tongue to these politicians.”

After Shonju left, the nurse brought the baby to be fed. Husna touched baby Azeem’s toes, his petal-like fingers. Once, she had laughed at her elder sister for her incessant baby talk when her son was born. Now it spilled out of her, and she felt no embarrassment. Soft, mashed up balls of Bengali words lisped with maternal love, sweeter, and more tender than the pranhara in the box.

Was that how all mother tongues started? With silly, besotted mothers cooing to the babies in their language? She realised that if she had to make up baby talk in another language, she probably couldn’t do it. There was something about expressing oneself in one’s own tongue, heard from infancy. It was the home that one carried within, because the earliest memories of the mother’s voice absorbed from the womb animated it. It was a birth right that no one could be permitted to take away or undermine.

But was it worth dying for? Worth being martyred like the student the police had shot on Thursday, the twenty-first?

A week later, after lunch, the house suddenly filled with voices. Shonju entered, followed by Monju Bhaijan, and Farid. Husna looked at him surreptitiously. His face was impassive and he gave her a distracted nod. What else could he do, or say, Husna could understand. After all, there she was, much married and a mother, to boot.

Loudly ordering tea to be served, sounding like a housewife, she left the room, disappointed in herself that despite her show of poise and indifference, her heart still ached in a dim way.

She asked herself, if, in the past, she and Farid had been granted the opportunity and the courage to express to each other what she was certain was a mutual attraction, would her life be different? Would the knowledge that her feelings were requited, or not, have made a difference to her sense of self?

When Jamil’s proposal of marriage came to her parents, and they had accepted on her behalf. It was too late. Farid was not around, having gone to visit his parents in Barishal, so nothing had been acknowledged. There had been no beginning, and subsequently, no closure.

During her impending wedding she had to make sure her feelings did not go into a Bhasha Andolon of sorts within her, agitating and demanding the right of her heart’s true language to be respected. Instead, she had gagged her heart, imposed on herself another language: a formal, emotionally correct, and socially acceptable language. The vocabulary of wedded propriety appropriate to an obedient daughter and daughter-in-law. An official language, foreign to her, like Urdu.

She sighed. Language supposedly empowered humans and differentiated them from animals. But if, despite the ability to verbalise, people could not make their wishes known or heard, were they not equal to dumb beasts? What use was the mother tongue when ones’ own mother had not understood her daughter’s unspoken wish just because she could not speak out: “I don’t want to marry, yet. I want to wait! Manbo na! Manbo na!” And what use was language when Farid too, had failed to use his tongue, express himself at the right time, ask her clearly to wait and not accede to the arranged marriage.

No, it was better that the Bengalis had spoken out. It was better that they had taken to the streets. This andolon would lead them to express their rights and desires, claim what was true. Of course, it would take four more years for Bengali to be constitutionally recognised as a state language of Pakistan, along with Urdu. But time was a tiny link in the cosmic chain of historical and personal events. Obviously, this last was not something thought up by Husna at the time, but by the Husna of today, watching her past self.

Today, she observed herself through the telescope of time, on the first day the young mother Husna nursed her baby son. Surely, she was unaware at that moment that everything was connected: her breast milk and baby talk in Bangla nourished not just her child, Azeem, but through him later, Shonju’s “multitudes” of a future generation, as a whole nation journeyed from Ekushey or twenty-first, to Ekattor or seventy-one: from the upheaval for language of February 21, 1952 to claiming a home for it in the war of independence of 1971. All were linked, even if separated by time and generation. In the end, everything existed in a grand NOW, where past and present simmered together.

Needless to say, all this was what she would think many years later, as an older sixty-year-old woman, looking back on her life as she wrote her journal, sitting in her room in her daughter’s suburban home in Maryland, in the US.

She dusted the photo frames on the painted bureau. Her doting late husband Jamil, and her gentle yet impassioned elder son Azeem looked at her from the distance of lost eras. One was gone in 1966 in a helicopter crash. The other in 1971, as a freedom fighter.

Farid, unframed, was a forbidden, almost forgotten memory. Lost like an unspoken language. Lost, because she had never fought for him.

She has a fanciful wish: in some after life she would like to ask those who had agitated and fought for a cause, and even laid down their life for it: in the end, was the sacrifice worth it?

“Today is February 21, 2002. Commemorated as Omor Ekushey in Bangladesh. But just another day here…” She wrote in her diary in Bangla, a language that her grandchildren could not speak.

She pulled out from under her bed the harmonium her daughter had recently bought for her from an Indian family that was moving back to India. She sat down on the rug, stroking the black and white keys with one hand and pumping lightly on the bellows at the back of the instrument.

On top of her harmonium lay open her old songbook, marked and written on by the music teacher of her childhood. She was a trained singer, and in 1950, she with a group from her school had performed some mass anthems and marching songs on what was then Radio Pakistan Dacca. There, they had met a musician named Abdul Latif, who would later put to melody a poem written by a journalist named Abdul Gaffar Choudhury for the student who had died on February 21. Later, the song would be recomposed by a noted composer named Altaf Mahmud and emerge as an anthem for what became Mother Language Day.

For her, of course, the day had a different and personal significance. It was the sacred anniversary of her motherhood that she had entered so reluctantly. On this day, every year, she sang to the son who had taught her the ultimate lesson of love and sacrifice and of never forgetting.

She started to hum the familiar refrain as she tried out a few chords.

Her granddaughter Zainab peeked through the door.

“What’re you singing, Nani[8]?” She said in her American accent.

“It’s a song about love, sweetie. About loving one’s language.”

“Which language, Nani?”

“Any language that you love, sweetheart. For me it’s Bangla, which you hear me speak with your mom.”

She sang the first lines. Zainab sat down beside Husna, gazing at her moving fingers.

“Cool! It’s like a portable piano! Can I learn to play it?”

“Well, only if you also learn to sing this song with me.”

“Deal!”

In bed that night, Husna wrote in her journal: “Today is February 21. International Mother Language Day. Today Zainab learnt to sing the Ekushey song, especially the refrain ‘Ami ki bhulite pari?’ And when I tested her on what it meant, she got it right as she ran away giggling and yelling: ‘Can I ever forget it?’

So, today turned out to be. . . not just another day, after all.”

Husna closed her eyes with a smile on her face. Just before she fell asleep, she felt as if she understood the world not with the uttered meanings of any language, but like an unborn baby breathing in the womb its mother’s voice, dreaming his or her first spoken word.

Dreaming in whatever language would become their home, their motherland.

[1] Literal translation of Azad is free

[2] Strike, translated from Bangla

[3] Doctor uncle, translated from Bangla

[4] Formal way of addressing in Urdu or Hindi — You

[5] Informal way of addressing a husband in Bangla as taking a husband’s name was seen as disrespectful and harmful

[6] Elder sister

[7] Careful, translation from Bangla

[8] Maternal grandmother, translation from Bangla

Neeman Sobhan is an Italy based Bangladeshi writer, poet, columnist and translator. Till recently, she taught Bengali and English at the University of Rome. She has an anthology of columns, An Abiding City: Ruminations from Rome; fiction collection: Piazza Bangladesh; Poetry: Calligraphy of Wet Leaves. Armando Curcio Editore is publishing her stories in Italian. This short story was first published in Ekhushey Anthology 1952-2022, edited by Niaz Zaman, writers.ink in 2022.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Tags Bangla, Beirut, Bengali, Brahmi, Cairo, Dacca, Dhaka, Eid, Hindi, Jamdani, Jinnah, Karachi, Khwaja Nazimuddin, Nastaliq, Nazrul, Neeman Sobhan, Partition, Tagore, Urdu, West Pakistan

Interview Review

To Egypt with Syed Mujtaba Ali and Nazes Afroz

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date October 16, 2023
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A discussion with Nazes Afroz along with a brief introduction to his new translation of Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Tales of a Voyager (Joley Dangay), brought out by Speaking Tiger Books.

Joley Dangay by Syed Mujtaba Ali in Bengali

Translations bridge borders, bring diverse cultures to our doorstep. But here is a translation of a man, who congealed diversity into his very being — Syed Mujtaba Ali (1904-1974), a student of Tagore, who lived by his convictions and wit. Like his guru, Mujtaba Ali, was a well-travelled polyglot, who till a few years ago was popular only among Bengali readers with his wide plethora of literary gems that can never be boxed into genres precisely. People were wary of translating his witty but touching renditions of various aspects of life, including travel and history from a refreshing perspective, till Nazes Afroz, a former BBC editor, took it up. His debut translation Mujtaba Ali’s Deshe Bideshe as In a Land Far from Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan in 2015 was outstanding enough to be nominated for the Crossword Prize. Recently, he has translated another book by Mujtaba Ali, Tales of a Voyager (Joley Dangay[1]), a book that takes us back a hundred years in time — a travelogue about a sea voyage to Egypt and travel within.

This narrative almost evokes a flavour of Egypt as depicted by Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile (1937) or The Mummy (film, set in 1932), simply because it is set around the same time period. Afroz in his introduction sets the date of Mujtaba Ali’s travels translated here between 1935 and 1939. The book was published in 1955. This book is a treasure not only because it gives a slice of historic perspective but also weaves together diverse cultures with syncretism.

Mujtaba Ali has two young travel companions, Percy and Paul, who despite being British (one of them is on the way to study in Oxford) seem to have a fair knowledge of Indian lore and there is the inimitable Abul Asfia Noor Uddin Muhammad Abdul Karim Siddiqi, who almost misses a train while trying to argue about the discrepancies shown in the time between his Swiss watch and the clock at Cairo. The description is sprinkled with tongue-in-cheek humour.

The voyage starts at Sri Lanka and sails through the Arabian Sea to Africa, where the ship pauses at Djibouti. Here, Mujtaba Ali expands his entourage with the addition of the long-named Abul Asfia, well-described in the blurb as a man who “carried toffees, a gold cigarette case, and other sundry items in his capacious overcoat pocket and who had the answer to all problems though he barely spoke a word ever.” Afroz himself has given an excellent introduction to the writer and the book — almost in the style of Mujtaba Ali himself. This is a necessary addition as it highlights Mujtaba Ali’s perspectives and gives his background to contextualise the relevance of this translation.

Mujtaba Ali’s style is poetic and humorous. It demystifies erudition and touches the heart simultaneously. His ability to laugh at himself is inimitable. He tells us a story about how the giraffe from Africa was introduced to China by a king from Bengal. At the end, he and his companions reflect about the tallness of this tale!

Mujtaba Ali contends: “‘…One of my friends is learning Chinese in order to read Buddhist scriptures in that language. Possibly you know that many of our ancient scriptures were destroyed with the decline of Buddhism in India. But they are still available in Chinese translations. My friend came across this story while searching for Buddhist scriptures. He had it translated and published in Bengali with the copy of the painting in a newspaper. Or else Bengalis would never have known of this because there is no mention of it in our history books or documents in the archives in Bengal.’”

The irony is not lost that Buddha is of Indian origin and yet an Indian has to learn Chinese to read the scriptures. The narrative continues with more dialogues:

“Percy said, ‘But sir, it didn’t sound like history. It [the giraffe’s story] exceeds fiction.’

“I [Mujtaba Ali] replied, ‘Why, brother? There is the saying in your language, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’

“And my personal opinion was that if the narrative of an event could not rouse interest in someone more than fiction, then that event had no historical value. Or I would say that the narrator was not a true historian. In our land, most of our historians are such dry bores.”

As Mujtaba Ali’s renditions are colourful – is he a ‘true historian’ by his own definition? Such narratives dot the travelogue, generating curiosity about major issues in a light vein and linking ancient cultures with the commonality of human needs, creating bridges, taking us to another time, finding parallels and making learned, hard concepts comprehensible by the simplicity of his observations.

Similarly, he says of the rose: “The Mughal-Pathan era of India ended a long time ago, but can we say for how long the roses brought by them will continue to give us fragrance?”

Some of his renditions are poetic and beautiful. Mujtaba Ali watches the sunrise by the pyramids and describes it: “Streaks of light were gradually lighting up the liquid darkness. The white parting in the middle of black hair was becoming visible. There was a light daubing of vermillion on that.”

Borrowing from diverse cultures, Mujtaba Ali skilfully weaves the commonality of cultures, customs and countries into his narrative under the umbrella of humanity. Afroz with his journalistic background and a traveller himself, is perhaps the best person to translate this narrative of another traveller from the past. The depth of erudition simplified with humour has been well captured in this translation too. In this interview, Afroz discusses more about the author, his new translation and the relevance of the book in the present context.

You have translated two books by Mujtaba Ali. Is he essentially an essayist? Were there many essayists and travel writers at that point, especially from within Bengal? Where would you place him as a writer in the annals of Bengali literature?

I don’t think that ‘essentially an essayist’ is the right description of Mujtaba Ali. Of course he wrote many essays but his repertoire included novels, short stories, funny anecdotal pieces based on his experiences (in Bangla they are called romyorochona) and stories from his travels, his encounters with extremely interesting people across the globe. He was deeply interested in culinary experiences. So he wrote a lot about food habits, multitude of cuisine and also gave recipes. Hence, it is difficult to box him into one genre of writing. With the publication of his first book, Deshe Bideshe, (serialised in 1948 in Bangla literary magazine Desh and as a book in 1949) he instantly occupied a significant place in Bengali literature.

His Bangla prose, steeped in effortless and seamless multilingual and multicultural references, swept the discerning readers of Bangla literature off their feet. It was not only the prose that he created but the breadth and depth of subjects his pen touched was unparalleled. No author in Bangla language has been able to write on such a wide range of topics till date.

Coming to the other part of the question about travel writers and essayist in Bengal in early part of the twentieth century: the short answer is, yes there were many. Travel writing has been an important genre in Bangla literature. Bengalis had been travelling – for pilgrimage, for rest and recuperation following illnesses, or just for pleasure since the middle of the nineteenth century, which was the time of Bengal renaissance. Writers who undertook such journeys, wrote about their travels too. So Mujtaba Ali is no exception in that regard. He followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and also his peers.

You have called the book ‘Tales’ of the Voyager — would you say that some of the stories are like tall tales here — perhaps tales to convey an idea or a thought which in itself would be larger than history in explaining the truth of a civilisation, like the tale of the giraffe? Would you see this as a comment on the gap between popular and documented narratives in history and on the different interpretations of history?

Ali was an excellent raconteur. He was also gifted with an almost eidetic memory. This allowed him to learn a dozen languages – some with native proficiency. He was a voracious reader too. So, not only did he read tomes on history and philosophy in many languages across cultures but also he gathered fascinating tales from many corners of the world as he loved storytelling. Whenever opportunities came, he masterfully wove those stories into his writing. Thus the tale of the giraffe’s journey from Africa to China via Bengal found its way in this book as he was narrating stories from the east coast of Africa. There is another thing that makes Ali’s writing attractive. He weaves in fascinating quirky funny stories while discussing something apparently dense and dry. I have not come across many writers who have done that. I don’t know whether to name it as his comment on bridging the gap between popular and documented history. There’s no evidence to prove that he was trying to achieve that as he never mentioned it. We could only conclude that it was a style that he invented and mastered in an effort to engage with his readers.

A writer that came to mind while reading this book of Mujtaba Ali is, one who is really more entertaining than accurate –Marco Polo. We know he lived five centuries before Mujtaba Ali. Mujtaba Ali of course is erudite, a scholar, but he seems to have a similar fire within him, a wanderlust. Do you think he would have been impacted by the writings of Marco Polo? Was wanderlust not a very typical phenomenon that was part of the culture that had evolved in Bengal post the Tagorean renaissance? Did Mujtaba Ali also travel for wanderlust?

Reading Ali’s books, one may think that he had wanderlust in the true sense. It will be correct to assume that he was fidgety; he refused to settle down; he moved jobs; he moved cities and even continents. But to be truly smitten by wanderlust, one has to enjoy the travel, which wasn’t possibly the case for Ali. His son told me that even though he travelled extensively, Ali didn’t enjoy travelling much. There had been many, of his time, who were really smitten by wanderlust — like Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963, walked to Tibet twice and wrote only in Hindi), Bimal Mukherjee (1903-1996, a true globetrotter who cycled to London from Kolkata), Umaprasad Mukhopadhyay (1902-1997, who crisscrossed the Himalayas from one end to another), Probodh Kumar Sanyal (1905-1983, his travelogues of the Himalayas), Premankur Atorthi (1890-1964, author of Mahasthobir Jatok) — to name a few. While these authors were inherently bohemian and were drawn towards travelling only for the sake of it, Ali was more of an unsettled soul who travelled with a particular purpose and wrote about his experiences as he had picked up fascinating stories and observed connections between cultures. Because he loved to tell stories and also because he was infused with the idea of internationalism that he inculcated from Tagore, there was no way he could escape but narrating the stories and cultural experienced from his travels.

Tales of a Voyager takes us on a sea voyage to Egypt. Did you travel to Egypt while translating the book? Would you say that the Egypt of those times still resonates in the present day — especially after the 2011 uprising?

Even before his one night stopover in Cairo that he narrated in Tales of a Voyager, Ali had previous experience of Cairo where he spent a year as a post-doctoral scholar in 1933-34 at the Al-Azhar University. So there are many short pieces on Cairo and Egypt by him in his other books. He raved about the café-culture of Cairo and came to the conclusion that Egyptians surpassed the Bengali in terms of adda—hours of the purposeless sessions of chitchat and chinwag. I have been to Cairo at least half a dozen times and realised how acute his observation was. I witnessed in person why Ali mentioned that this was a city that never slept. The cafes and shops were open all night and the streets were full of people with families including children until well past midnight.

Late night, a cafe in Cairo. Photo Courtesy: Nazes Afroz

As expected, the political landscape that you mention in the question, would be completely different between Ali’s time in the 1930s and in 2010 when I started visiting Cairo. When Ali first went to Cairo in 1933, Cairo had just gained full independence from the forty years of British occupation (not as an annexed state but more of a protectorate). So there are some references of the political figures like Sa’ad Zaghloul Pasha[2] in his various writings but the main focus was on its cultures.

When I started travelling to Cairo from 2010, I witnessed some similarities in the cultural traits as elaborated by Ali. But politically by then, Egypt had moved far from where it was in the 1930. It had become an architect of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1950s. It was the most prosperous country in North Africa and an important leader among the Arab nations. But it was also reeling under the oppression of one party rule and the youth were bubbling to break away from that. This is something we witnessed unfolding from 2011.

What were the challenges you faced while translating this book? Was it easier to handle as it was the second book by the same author?

The main challenge of translating Mujtaba Ali is transposing his unique language steeped in multi-lingual references into English. Also to get his oblique sense of wit and puns from Bangla into another language, which at times, may not have the right words for them. Translating the second book of the same author doesn’t make it easier as the challenges I just mentioned remain for every book.

Tell us what spurs you on to continue translating Mujtaba Ali. Please elaborate.

Syed Mujtaba Ali’s writing had a huge influence on me from my young age. His writing shaped my worldview, planted the seeds of curiosity about many societies, taught me how to make friends in distant lands and start making connections between cultures. So what I’m today is largely due to his writing. As an avid reader of his texts, I felt that it was my duty to introduce him to a wider readership. That’s the motivation of my taking up the translation of Ali. It is also a tribute to a writer who had such an impact on me.

In your introduction you have written of Mujtaba Ali and his writing. What had he written to be put on the Pakistani watchlist in 1950s?

He had penned an essay opposing the imposition of Urdu as Pakistan’s national language on the Bengalis who were in majority in the newly created East Pakistan. He even predicted how the Bengalis would rebel against such a policy, which came true in 1952 in the form of the Language Movement. He wrote this when he was the principal of a government college in Bogura. So he drew wrath of the Pakistani leaders and an arrest warrant was issued against him. That was the time when he left Pakistan and returned to India in 1949.

There also the other difficult personal situation. His wife (married in 1951) who was from Dhaka and was working in the education ministry, continued to live in East Pakistan with their two sons while he lived in India working for the Indian Government. So Pakistanis always thought he was an Indian spy while he was under suspicion in India that he was on the side of Pakistan!

Did Mujtaba Ali participate in the political upheaval between Pakistan and Bangladesh? Please elaborate if possible.

Ali was hugely affected in 1971 because of his personal situation as I just mentioned. I don’t know how deeply he was involved with the liberation war in Bangladesh but he wrote a novel, Tulonaheena (his last novel), against that backdrop – based in Kolkata, Shillong and Agartala and told through the story of a lover couple – Shipra and Kirti. So it is likely that he was involved in some capacity with the war efforts.

Tulonaheen( Incomparable), Syed Mujtaba Ali’s last novel

Mujtaba Ali studied in Santiniketan — that would have been in the early days of the university. Would he have been influenced by Tagore himself and the other luminaries who were in Santiniketan at that time? Can you tell us how? And did that impact his work and outlook?

The simple answer is: it was huge. Tagore was the polar star for Mujtaba Ali, which he acknowledged every now and then in his writing. This experience also decided his life’s journey. He imbibed humanism and internationalism as a direct student of Tagore in Santiniketan. He also developed deep apathy towards all sorts of bigotry. So it was not surprising that he would find it very difficult to accept a country that was created on the basis of religion.

Do you find him relevant in the present-day context? Is your writing influenced or inspired by his style?

I feel that his relevance will never fade. His ability to create cultural connection from different corners of the world will continue to fascinate readers for generations. Yes, in this globalised world when information from around the world are at our finger tips with the click of a button but one also needs to learn how to look at those information beyond mere facts and go deep underneath to make a sense. Apart from being fun and entertaining read, I feel his writing is one such training tool to learn how to make cultural connections. This way, if one wants, one can truly become a global citizen.

As for me, my outlook towards the world is massively influenced by Ali’s writing but not my writing style. It’s simply because I’m not a polyglot like him! I’ll not be able to come anywhere close to his style even if I try.

Well, that is for the reader to judge I guess! You have books on Afghanistan. But you do travel with your camera often. Will you write of your own travels at some point — like Mujtaba Ali but in English?

I have only one book on Afghanistan – a cultural guide book that I co-authored with an Afghan friend. I was working on my own book on Afghanistan, which would have capture one decade of Afghan history and interspersed with my own direct experiences of the country between 2002 and 2015. But the research got stalled for lack of funding. I hope to revive it at some point. And, yes I would like to do my own writing from my travels. That’s there in the wish list.

What are your future plans as a journalist, writer and photographer?

Travel more, see the world more, make more friends and photograph more!

Thanks a lot for giving us your time and the wonderful translation.

[1] Literal translation from Bengali, In Water and On Land

[2] 1857-1957, Egyptian revolutionary and statesman

Read the excerpt from Tales of a Voyager by clicking here

(The online interview has been conducted through emails by Mitali Chakravarty)

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Slices from Life

It’s Amazing the Things We can Do

Post author By borderlesssg1
Post date March 14, 2022
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By Erwin Coombs

That’s the title of a narrative that needs explaining. I have to start off by being quite honest: I was raised in a cloud of cynicism and despair. As I’ve already hinted — my upbringing was classically dysfunctional with a broken home at age six and all kinds of attendant problems. Poverty was one. Actually, poverty is never one problem because it has a ricochet effect like shooting a gun in a metal room as it leads to a whole bagful of treats that make life that much more difficult. Apart from the outward signs of misery, there were all kinds of internalised ones.

I am a huge optimist by nature and why I don’t know. It might have to do with a faulty IQ or some brain injury suffered in youth that I can’t recall, for obvious reasons. Mind you, I did fall out of my highchair when I was a toddler in Cairo, Egypt. I don’t know if the highchairs at that time were substandard or perhaps my mother didn’t bother to do up my safety belt, but I went down like a ton of bricks to the non-carpeted floor. I’m sure there was no permanent damage, except for the fact that there is an indent in the middle of the top of my head.

When I was young and had hair, I remember occasionally coming across that indent and thinking “Thank God I have hair to cover THAT thing up with!” But God has a delicious sense of irony and between Him and gravity, or rather with gravity working as his foot soldier, time chipped, or rather pulled away at my hair. And as my hairline receded like a Maple Leaf fan’s playoff hopes, that deformity became a feature of mine. I’m not a vain man, by any stretch, but this was a bit to deal with. Over time, I got used to it.

I recall one day I was helping out in one of my daughter’s grade two classrooms. I was sitting reading a story to several cute little kids when one of the girls asked, in a completely good-natured way, “What’s that big lump on your head?” I wanted to explain that rather than a big lump it was actually a crevice which gave the appearance of a big lump, but how lame would that have sounded? Instead, I did more of that thinking on my feet thing and said, “You see, Ariana, I have so many smart thoughts that I don’t have room for them in my brain. So, I store them there.”

She looked wide-eyed at this new marvel she had never heard of before and I could tell she was impressed. I had turned what could have been a potentially embarrassing deformity for my daughter into a point of admiration. I had new cache as the really smart guy. Score one for Dad.

Thinking back on that highchair fall, there was another potentially brain damaging incident that took place in Cairo. Given that there were two such events it’s amazing I can even remember them. But I guess the damage was fairly minimal, though I’m sure several former teachers of mine would claim otherwise. We had just arrived in Cairo as my father was posted at the Canadian embassy, but our house wasn’t ready yet. That meant a two week stay at the Cairo Hilton on the public coin. Being a toddler, I couldn’t entirely appreciate how cool this was, but my family did and when Dad was at work we spent a lot of time at the pool. I couldn’t walk then but neither could a lot of the guests who made good use of the pool-side bar. My Mum no doubt did, and my siblings were busy playing childish games. I was plopped on the steps of the shallow end of the pool to bake in the sun and hopefully not teeter into the water. Hope is a fine thing, but you don’t want to risk a toddler’s life on it. And sure, as shooting I did the teetering and as with the highchair, toppled to the bottom. The landing wasn’t so bad, it’s just that there was no resurfacing to go with it and so I sat comically at the bottom, no doubt waving my arms and looking wide eyed.

Meanwhile, on terra firma, someone thought to look for me.

“Has anyone seen Erwin?’

If I had a toddler that was missing poolside, I would have phrased it a little more urgently. But the whole family circled the pool until my brother Eddy spotted me at the bottom, now fairly blue through lack of oxygen and called out.

“There he is!” I believe he said it like a child finding a hidden Easter egg in a hunt instead of a drowning sibling. But for all that they did pull me out, dry me off and I was not much the worse for wear. Here’s a funny follow up lest you think that our childhood experiences don’t have some kind of resonance in our adult years. I was never told of this almost drowning incident until I was well into my teens, for some reason. Yet my whole life I had been, and am still, subject to a recurring nightmare where, you guessed it, I am at the bottom of a pool, gasping for breath and I wake up panting. As the song says, take good care of your children. If you don’t they might end up with misshapen heads and poor sleeping habits.

There was a third incident in Cairo involving a camel and the pyramids. My God, but it sounds like I’ve had this exciting life but really most of it has been spent holding onto a channel changer and dreaming of better days. While in Cairo the family decided to take a tour around the pyramids riding camels because, hey, that’s the thing to do there. And it would have been a grand idea except that my Mum had just strapped the baby me onto the camel before she got on when the camel decided that one passenger was enough, and it bolted. Camels are ornery beasts and when they get a mind to something they do it and apparently kidnapping the blonde baby was a bee in its bonnet so off it went. Soon one of the camel instructors leapt onto another camel and chased me down in the Sahara after a few minutes. Had he not, I might well have wound up as a Bedouin being raised in the desert as some sort of a poor man’s Lawrence of Arabia. Looking back on my time in Egypt, it seems clear that my parents had decided to do away with me but lacked the foresight for a proper plan or the energy to keep at it. But I hold no grudge. They did have three other mouths to feed, after all.

Despite all those damages to my brain at an early age I have managed to negotiate this old world with some degree of success. And one of the points I want to make in this narrative is that people are extraordinarily able to do things they think they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, if that doesn’t sound too convoluted a sentence. In other words, we can accomplish things under the most enormous pressure and under terrible conditions that we think we might not be able to do even under ideal circumstances. What this says about human beings is that we are to be marveled at and not despaired over, as we so often do. We look down on our species and God knows we look down on ourselves countless times a day.

The old ‘pop’ psychology of examining the self is not just a cutesy way of filling up self-help books with advice. Self-help books are generally, a dark alley to visit. They are great at momentary inspiration but generally don’t last beyond the initial reading. That’s why people keep poring over them again and again. And here is one of the problems with self-help books; they tell us what we already know to be true and what should be done. The advice is common-sensical. But following advice is much more difficult than just seeking it out and so we repeat the patterns of dumb behavior. And as long as we are seeking advice from a friend or a book, we get the feeling we are doing something. It calls to mind the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who said, “No longer talk about what a good man should be. Be one.” Or in the words of my father, “shit or get off the pot.” I’ve always thought a good title to reveal this problem with self-help books would be Breaking the Self-Help Dependency Cycle: Volume 8.

Returning to my narrative highlighting the amazing things people can do and not even realise they can do it. I have a life and death example from World War II. I knew an old woman whose life had been a series of tragedies. Sure, she had had some joy. She was born in the First World, had children she loved and grandchildren, had friends and all manner of hobbies from knitting to crocheting and everything in between. Mind you knitting and crocheting are close so there might not seem a great deal in between, but there is, and she pursued them, getting a joy out of the little things in life. This despite the fact that she was raised in Nazi occupied Holland, had a brother who died in a Nazi work camp, one of her children was killed in a traffic accident while just a boy, her husband had died of cancer, she had defeated cancer, well, the list goes on. But despite the list of reasons to give up and surrender to despair she found joy where she could, displaying a strength of character that people who have suffered much less and whined much more would do well to learn from.

Here is her story of doing what you think you can’t when circumstances demand you step up and find a solution instead of an excuse. This lady, Gail, was living on a farm near some woods during the Nazi occupation of her country. One of her two brothers had died in that German work camp so the other one who was at the same camp, decided that he was not going to stay. He escaped from Germany and somehow made his way home to the farm. His family hid him, but he had to spend a lot of time living in the woods to avoid the SS (Shutzstaffel) who knew he was there but couldn’t catch him. One day he was at the farm splitting wood when word came that the SS were coming for him. He naturally ran to the woods. Here was the trouble. The Nazis arrived and demanded to know where he was. Gail was the only one home and denied that he had been there for over a year. The crafty head of the unit spied the partially split pile of wood and asked who had been doing this job. Gail calmly said she had, and as the Nazis had taken away the men, she had no choice, now did she? The head of the unit nodded calmly and in an equally calm manner took out his revolver.

“You are doing a very good job. You’re pretty skilled for a little farm girl, aren’t you?”

He looked at her smilingly and gestured to the pile of logs.

“Show me how it’s done. If you can prove it wasn’t your brother who did this, well, that will be fine. If you cannot, you die here and now at the hands of an officer that you’ve lied to.”

He stepped back, keeping the gun pointed at Gail. She told me she had never picked up an axe in her life, but she knew that if there was ever a time to do it and to learn how, this was it. She said that she was trembling inside but knew that that fear had to be kept hidden. She also knew that if she failed and was killed it would redouble the SS man’s commitment to track down her brother. Even when her life was hanging by the swing of an axe, she was concerned with the fate of someone else. And this also speaks to me about the true nature of humanity. Despite the fact that whatever selfish tendencies we have can be played upon to act in more selfish ways by people who make a profit out of selfishness, we are fundamentally a caring species with streaks of unselfishness that are not merely streaks but represent our true colours.

Gail stepped up to the pile, picked up the ax and said a silent prayer of desperation and hope while she put on a brave face,

“Dear God, please, just let me swing this axe true, just this once.”

She had seen others do it and tried to replicate their movements, placing a log on the stand, shifting her hands down the shaft and giving a mighty swing. The log split in two with the softest sound. She hid her own amazement and looked at the man holding his gun and her life in his hands with a bored “See?” sort of expression. The Nazi uncocked his gun and placed it back in the holster.

“Couldn’t have done better myself. Carry on,” and he and his men walked away to continue the search for the brother that I’m happy to say was never successful. That’s the brother whom I knew as a delightful old man who had given me those sharks teeth all those years ago. He, like his sister, was so full of life and happiness despite all they had gone through. Or perhaps not despite but because of all they had gone through. From the wonder of a hundred-year-old shark’s tooth to the smile of their babies in their arms, they loved all that life had to offer because they knew how precious and, surprisingly, readily available joy is in this world.

Erwin Coombs is a retired teacher of philosophy, history and literature who has rejected all forms of retirement. He is an avid writer, reader, and observer of life. When not observing and reading and living, he is writing. Erwin has lived in Egypt, Jamaica, England and travelled a great deal but, in his mind, not enough. His writing is a celebration of people and opportunity, both of which life gives in abundance. These narratives are from his, as yet unpublished book, Dusty the Cat: Her Part in My Downfall.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Tags Cairo, Easter, Egypt, England, Erwin Coombs, holland, Jamaica, Lawrence of Arabia, Marcus Aurelius, Nazi, Shutzstaffel, World War II

Nostalgia Slices from Life

Yesterday Once More?

Renowned film analyst Ratnottama Sengupta revisits a page from her past, weaving history and films into an eyewitness account of events that had occurred as chaos reigned on the streets of Cairo, Egypt.

Cairo Film Festival, November 27 – December 6, 2012

Cairo.

“This one week will change everything,” Amir told Farah in The Winter of Discontent. Ibrahim El Batout’s recapitulation of the Arab Spring had inaugurated the 35^th Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) on November 27 of 2012. “It will take them one week to find out who uploaded the protest on the net,” the activist tells the journalist, “but one week later this government may not be there.” These words were borne true in January of 2011. They had sounded ironic when the festival was flagged off on the sixth day of Tahrir Square 2 — by Egypt’s Minister for Culture, Mohamed Saber Arab. He had hugged festival director Ezzat Abu Ouf who was in tears as he said, “In difficult times, it is important to protect one’s freedom of expression.”

It surely must have been difficult to host the festival that was paused following the Revolution. “I am Positive” was the slogan of CIFF that urged ‘positive thinking’ on revolution and freedom. Besides the inaugural film by Ibrahim El Batout, who mastered shooting in war zones for international channels, there was an entire section devoted to cinema of revolution. These documentaries included Good Morning Egypt that displayed people’s mixed emotions on the eve of dismantling Mubarak’s regime. The Road to Tahrir Square searched for the roots of the Egyptian revolution in the country’s labour movement. Eyes of Freedom and Street of Death documented the demand to speed up Presidential elections and handing over of authority from the Military Council to a Civilian government. By the end of the day in January 2011, the police and army had attacked the demonstrators and forced them to evacuate Tahrir Square, outraging the world by the human rights violation.

All this would have been perfect material “to express the heritage of the past, the reality of the present and the dreams of the future” – to quote the city’s Governor, Osama Kamal. For, “cinema records and relays to the world stories of our lives, our thoughts, feelings, social issues, principles…” And “meaningful art is one of the basic pillars of struggle and progress of a people,” he declared. That is why the logo of the revived CIFF depicted the hawk, a symbol of the pharaohs, perched on the metal arm of the revolutionaries in the precious metal of gold.

But it had turned ironic as the awards were cancelled due to the reality outside the Opera, close to the Square and venue of the festival that seeks to empower the youth by providing a platform for their talents. On Thursday, Qasir el Niel bridge leading to Tahrir Square had been blocked off. The museum housing the treasures of Tutankhamen was closed as it was on the turbulent Square. People — reportedly paid by the Brotherhood — were being trucked in for Saturday’s show of strength. Deaths were being reported from outlying areas where the Opposition was more restive as the channels were agog with news that the draft of the Constitution was ready and “any hour now” President Mohamed Morsi would sign it, pre-empting the opposition by the judiciary, intelligentsia, and the liberals who would lose much of their freedom if the Shariat laws would be enforced in Cairo’s open society.

The “action replay” on Tahrir Square was protesting the President’s move to arrogate himself extraordinary powers “until the new Constitution is in place.” Their objection was that he had pushed out the Christians and liberals from the Constituent Assembly, in order to ensure a smooth passage of the Constitution and present it as fait accompli before its expected date.

Yes, that one week in November 2012 had once more changed the course of history on Tahrir Square.

Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Tags Arab Spring, Cairo, Cairo Film Festival, CIFF 35, Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, Mohamed Saber Arab, Mubarak’s regime, Ratnottama Sengupta, Shariat Law, Tahrir Square, The Winter of Discontent, Tutankhamen